On this day in 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists in the Ladies’ Gallery sprayed the House floor with 30 rounds of automatic pistol fire. At the time, 240 members were voting to reauthorize a program that allowed migrant Mexican farmworkers to enter the U.S..

The assailants wounded five lawmakers: Reps. Alvin Bentley (R-Mich.), who took a bullet to the chest; Clifford Davis (D-Tenn,), who was shot in the leg; Ben Jensen (R-Iowa), who was shot in the back; and George Hyde Fallon (D-Md.) and Kenneth Roberts (D-Ala.), who suffered minor wounds. Bentley was critically wounded.

Among the pages who helped evacuate wounded members to waiting ambulances on the East Front of the Capitol were two future representatives: Bill Emerson, who served as a Republican from Missouri, and Paul Kanjorski, a Democrat from Pennsylvania.

Reflecting on the attack years later, another House page, Bill Goodwin, said: “That’s something you just don’t forget. To this day, I can still hear those bullets going phht-dut, phht-dut alongside of me, those two bullets that one landed above Bill Emerson, and one alongside Bill Emerson, who was just 8 feet away from me, to my right. I can still hear those bullets hitting that mahogany wall. Phht-dut, you know? What a sound. And the thing is, I saw that it was a gun, you know? I saw it right from the start of it. Saw the guy stand up.”

The attackers received 70-year prison terms after their death sentences were commuted by President Dwight Eisenhower. Cordero was released in 1978. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter freed the remaining assailants after Cuban President Fidel Castro released several CIA agents imprisoned in Cuba.